Will Facebook try rip off cypherpunk, too?

Editor's note

Early this week, Facebook announced that the company is lauching its own blockchain division. While Mark Zuckerberg has said before he's considered cryptocurrencies in the context of Facebook, the announcement comes at a time the social network empire is plagued with mounting accusations about mis-handling user data: just yesterday it was hit with a new class action lawsuit over data on mobile devices.

Does Facebook's management believe a public blockchain will be a panacea for the company's data-sharing problems? If so, it would be a shocking turn in the cypherpunk or (cyberpunk) story. In the 90s, the cyberspace was imagined as an antidote to real-world corporate power--not an enabler of it. Will the world's predominant blockchains continue to be open-allocation, or will a Facebook-and-Wall-Street-backed copycat outstrip them? As financial services in particular grow more comfortable with Bitcoin, perhaps there's a middle way.

Something is happening that many of us have seen as inevitable for a long time. Bitcoin has become financialized. It isn't ironic in the slightest – it is the inevitable actualization of its destiny. pic.twitter.com/pTtlAwmVcY

"Do not accept storage devices, USBs or files from people you don’t know. DO NOT charge phones, computers, or other devices in public charging stations. There are known attacks involving these stations. Get a portable battery pack instead."

"This concern with general inequality is frequently, of course, coupled with a concern for income disparities between particular groups of people categorised by gender, race or whatever other measure. It is fashionable to attribute gaps to ‘discrimination’, even if such discrimination is statistically impossible."

"Underground and darknet market use of Monero has a good chance of increasing as government persecution of 'non-compliant' cryptocurrency currency users intensifies with blacklists of 'tainted' coins and more scrutiny at centralized fiat-crypto exchanges leading to tax inspections."